Social Marketing

Any social program attempts to market a social product

What is a Social Product? These could be Tangible Products Ideas Practices Beliefs attitudes

Marketing allows us to bring in socially desirable behaviours When we do that we contribute to Social marketing

Since it covers a wide range of issues not necessarily connected to commercial considerations it has a wider, if not commercially, desirable perspectives

For the past two decades, the focus has been on ‘marketing’ Social marketing – using the concepts of exchanges, transactions, segmentation, target marketing, consumer research and positioning

Understanding, creating, communication and delivering customer value and satisfaction are at the very heart of modern marketing - Kotler and Armstrong

Social Change Campaigns often face difficulties because People are uninformed and this makes them harder to reach through conventional media Response to new information increases with audience involvement or interest; if few people are interested, few will respond Response to new information increases with information’s compatibility with audience attitudes. People tend to avoid disagreeable information People read different things in information, depending on their beliefs and attitudes

Why does this happen? Researchers have cited several factors that dilute mass media effect Audience factors - apathy, defensiveness, cognitive disability Message factors – attention, comprehension, perception Media factors – appropriateness of media Response- mechanism factors – making it easy for the audience to respond

In order to bring about change in customer/prospect behaviour, the marketer has to first understand the barriers against change by positioning himself/herself in the shoes of the prospect/customer

Conditions that favour Social Change Campaigns Monopolization - Could you be the only message or only use that medium exclusively? Canalization Favourable public attitude base helps to channel existing attitudes and behaviour Supplementation – mass media communication supplemented by face-to-face communication

So for any Social Change program, the marketing challenge is to identify Cause – social objective to provide a desirable answer to a social problem Change agent – whoever attempts to bring about the social change Target adopters – individuals/groups/entire population Channels - communication and distribution pathways which help exchange influence and response between change agents and target adopters Change strategy – program adopted to effect change in target adopters’ attitudes and behaviours

Social marketing requires knowledge of each target –adopter group Sociodemographic characteristics Psychological profile Behavioural characteristics

These help make accurate predictions Predictions are prerequisites to the ability to influence outcomes

Social marketing would have to identify ‘influentials’ The aim is to neutralize, the opposition and gain support of ‘influentials’

Influentials could be Permission granting groups Support groups Opposition groups Evaluation groups

Social Change – Management Technology The social product must fit the target adopter. Defining the fit – what are the TA looking for? Designing the fit – what makes a good fit? Delivering the fit – How to bring it to TA? Defending the fit – How do I sustain it?